Woman convicted of killing patients with bleach awaits fate

Kimberly Saenz was found guilty of capital murder in connection with the deaths of five dialysis center patients.

Story highlights

A jury finds Kimberly Saenz guilty of capital murder

She faces the death penalty or life in prison

Two witnesses say they saw her use a syringe to draw bleach from a cleaning pail

The defense says she is being used as a scapegoat

A woman who was found guilty of killing five patients at a Texas dialysis center by injecting them with bleach will learn her fate this week.

A jury in Angelia County found Kimberly Saenz, 38, guilty last week of capital murder in connection with the deaths.

On Monday, they will consider whether she should be sentenced to death or put in prison for life.

The deaths took place in April 2008 when Saenz was an employee at DaVita Dialysis Clinic in Lufkin, about 120 miles north of Houston.

Prosecutors said she killed five patients by injecting them with bleach. Five others survived.

Two witnesses said they saw Saenz use a syringe to draw bleach from a cleaning pail and inject it into the IV lines of patients.

And prosecutors said internet search queries on her laptop showed Saenz had looked up bleach poisoning and whether it could be detected in dialysis lines.

Saenz did not take the stand at the month-long trial. Her attorneys argued she was being used as a scapegoat by the clinic to explain the unusually high number of deaths that April, according to CNN affiliate KTRE-TV in Lukfin.

Medics were called to the clinic at least 19 times that month.

The spate of deaths forced DaVita to close its doors until it met state requirements.